Lifesaver Campaign

In 2015, working at the American Relief Agency for the Horn of Africa (ARAHA) I embarked on a journey to overhaul ARAHA's website, during that process I spearheaded the creation of a crowdfunding platform called Lifesaver Campaign. An initiative that empowered ARAHA donors to raise funds for projects that hold personal significance to them. And the results have been astounding – with over $6 million raised thus far, we enabled donors to make a tangible impact on communities in need. Donors gathered and rallied families and friends to raise funds for water wells, school projects, famine relief, orphan support, and more.

Background, and process

ARAHA has always been a strong organization when it came to individual giving. But, we wanted to improve further on that. So during the website overhaul, improving usability, and updating the brand, I was also looking for ways to improve donor retention, and provide new ways for donors to contribute. I came across Charity Water’s birthday fundraiser, and it was a lightbulb moment. I immediately thought of how we can use something similar to empower our donors.

Soon after, I began to conceptualize the idea and met with the executive director to run it by him. We agreed to accomplish a few objectives with the campaign:

• Allow and Empower donors to make a tangible difference in a meaningful way

• Allow donors to choose from a list of projects in need or propose one.

• Provide donors with a full report once the project is complete

• Provide access for donors to create and run their campaigns. 

• Highlight, and feature some projects on our home page.

With this in mind, I added a User Interface (UI) Design to the overall website redesign, and refined it until we landed on a completed UI design.   Once the website was live, we did a test run with a few projects from some top donors, and within a few months it was a hit immediately.

Feature area on the home page | 2015-2021

Campaign Landing Page | | 2015-2021

Individual Campaign Page | | 2015-2021

Even after my time with ARAHA, the campaign is still going strong.

Here is the link to the site.